Your take on the installer in npm v6 is not wrong. It got that way by a process of gradual iterative evolution, and it has lots of warts. npm v7 features a gro

Your take on the installer in npm v6 is not wrong. It got that way by a process of gradual iterative evolution, and it has lots of warts. npm v7 features a ground-up rewrite of the tree resolution and deification logic in the @npmcli/arborist module. I recommend checking it out, or at least staying tuned for the beta coming soon.